Hedge fund manager Paul Marshall agreed to pay £100 million (S$170.9 million) for The Spectator, a politically influential British magazine that’s known to exert a big sway over the Conservative Party.
The billionaire chairman and founding partner of Marshall Wace emerged winner in the race for ownership of the weekly, which was hived off in an ongoing bidding process for the right-leaning Telegraph Media Group.
“The acquisition will provide The Spectator with access to the investment, expertise and facilities to grow,” according to a statement on Tuesday (Sep 10) from Old Queen Street Ventures (OQS), the media company owned by Marshall. “The plan is for OQS to make good previous underinvestment in one of the world’s greatest titles,” Marshall said.
The purchase will lend Marshall a prominent voice in Westminster, making him an influential person in the UK’s power centre decades after his failed attempt at a political career. In 1987, he unsuccessfully ran for Parliament as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats, and eventually became a supporter of the Conservative Party and one of the prominent backers of Brexit.
Marshall already has a media footprint. He is a backer of GB News – a news channel with ambitions to become the British version of Fox News. He also owns UnHerd, a growing online platform for largely right-leaning opinion.
The Spectator is the world’s oldest weekly magazine still in print while the Telegraph dates back to 1855, claiming the scoop for the outbreak of World War II.
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“A particular focus will be given to expanding the magazine’s reach in the Anglosphere and in North America,” according to the statement.
Marshall bought the magazine from RedBird IMI, a joint venture between US private equity firm RedBird and International Media Investments, a vehicle controlled by the United Arab Emirates Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mansour Zayed Al Nahyan, who also owns the Manchester City football club.
The acquisition comes months after the UAE-backed investor group put the Spectator and the Telegraph newspaper on the block after its proposed takeover came under attack by Tory politicians opposed to that deal. Keir Starmer, who led his Labour Party to victory in July and became Prime Minister, had also previously expressed concern about foreign state ownership of British news outlets.
The seller is seeking to recoup the £600 million it effectively paid for both the Telegraph and The Spectator magazine in the now-scuppered deal.
The titles have drawn interest from a wide range of potential buyers, including some of the biggest figures in British media such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the publisher of the UK’s Daily Mail tabloid and David Montgomery’s National World. Advertising tycoon Maurice Saatchi, who is a member of the House of Lords, had also expressed an interest, local media have reported. BLOOMBERG
